


come, writers and critics

by gisho



Category: Watchmen
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Ficlet Collection, Speculative Backstory, Speculative Future-Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-10 14:35:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 13,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6989188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> Come writers and critics</i><br/><i>Who prophesize with your pen</i><br/><i>And keep your eyes wide</i><br/><i>The chance won't come again ... </i> - Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are A' Changin'" </p><p>A collection of Watchmen short fic, often on the theme of dealing with the tides of history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 11:20 shills

**Author's Note:**

> All these have been previously posted, most of them on the Watchmen kinkmeme.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on the kinkmeme, for the 'captcha prompt' (take the words you have to type to prove you're a human as a prompt).

"Call now and we'll throw in with your order, absolutely FREE, this amazing, one-of-a-kind, multifunctional ..."

(She's three months pregnant. It scares her a little bit.)

Click.

"... plus shipping and handling. Not available in all areas. Offer void where prohibited by law. Restrited to the continental United States ..."

Click. Whirrr. The celing fan is spinning lazily, the stand mixer is turning sugar and butter and vanilla into frosting, somewhere outside a police siren is wailing.

(The cake needs to be out of the oven by 11:30. It's baking at four hundred degrees. At one o'clock she has to be at the dojo, she picks up her husband from work at six and and six-thirty they're having dinner with the Ortegas, neither of whom can make a decent red velvet cake. The temperature is thirty-three degrees Celcius outside her kitchen window. At nine she and her husband will watch the news together, and at midnight she and seven other people in spandex and kevlar will burst through the windows of the LA office of a Thailand-based human trafficing ring which has recently expanded its operations, waving guns.)

"... why, Marcie, my life has just been so much easier ever since I started using the ..."

The oven timer pings. Someone laughs loudly from next door, and there's a noise like a bicycle bell.

(Her child will grow up in a world where there's no such thing as a fallout shelter. Where cars run on electricity and electricity is almost as cheap as air, and they have never been at war with Russia. If the murmurs from Washington and Moscow are correct, her child will grow up in a world where the American army has gone the way of the passenger pigeon, and a force taking orders from an international coalition is the only duly authorized force. There will still be infomercials, though. Advertisements are inevitable. They're worse than kudzu.)

(And there will still be domestic violence and drug addiction and homophobia and people generally being jerks to each other, but there will be a bit less gang violence, a bit less large-scale drug smuggling, a bit less corruption in government. This is her gift to her child. To everyone's child. A small gift, but worthwhile.)

Frosting is done; it tastes right. The cake is too hot to touch without oven mitts. It will cool enough to frost in fifteen or twenty minutes. Click.

"Amazing new breakthroughs! Learn the truth about physics - the truth the government doesn't WANT you to know! You, too, can learn to manipulate matter with your mind, and take CONTROL of your life, with these twelve easy lessons on video from - "

Click.

(She has no intention of telling her child the truth.)

(Some secrets should be carried to the grave. This is one of them. If she looks more sad than angry when the name of Dr. Manhattan arises in coversation, it can be attributed to some unspecified loss, or a calm temprament. No. She won't even admit what she does at nights. Her child will have a clean slate. Make her own choices. They're going to do this right. Her husband agrees with her on this, although he won't promise anything regarding improbable gagetry as birthday presents. It has to be better than action figures, at least.)

(There don't seem to be so many Ozymandias action figures around these days. The whole concept is passe, and Veidt is too powerful and dignified and stuffy now to be a convincing hero, and so kids have moved on to dolls that were never real. As for the grown-ups, Silk Spectre pinups were never a big item - the first Silk Spectre ran her course as a lust object, and the second was known to threaten lawsuits - but they've vanished from even the shadier specialty stores and comic shops. Just as well, really. She hates the idea of masked heros being a way for someone to make money.)

(She's made her peace with the lust, thougt. Her husband loves her, loves her breasts and calves and lips and the mole under her eye. Other people's opinions are pretty much irrelevant. And of course, pretty soon she'll get stretch marks and gain a lot of weight.)

(Time off. At least six months, probably a year. She can just about teach judo with a baby bump, using some creativity. She can't go fight for real. But she can still lead, she can still inspire, she can still make sure the masks of LA are being the menace to evil they were meant to be. Strength in numbers. She's warmed a lot to the idea of strength in numbers.)

Someone's car alarm gives up and shuts off. Almost too faint to be heard, someone starts singing, in a language that might be Spanish.

The television plays soft classical music. The cake peacefully gives up its thermal energy.

Nothing much happens in the kitchen for the next five minutes.

"Thank you, and that was Beethoven's piano sonata number 14, performed by the Zephyrus Quintet. This commercial-free infomerical slot brought to you as a public service by Veidt Enterprises."

(A very subtle advertisement, but she can't bring herself to mind. The music was beautiful.)

(She should call Adrian. They havn't spoken since 1985. She's not sure if she hates him anymore, and once that would have felt like a betrayal, but she thinks sometimes of how her child will go to school and laugh with her friends and only have to hide under her desk for earthquake drills.)

(He once told her how lucky she was that her mother loved her so desperately, even if it made her into her mother's shadow. She doesn't know why he thought so.)

(He has no children.)

\---


	2. association eyeballs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another captcha prompt.

Larry saw the potential straightaway. Masked heros were going to be a big thing. He could feel it in his bones. Not that it was going to be _his_ big thing, of course. His thing was dancers, and dancers who could act, and actresses who could dance, and he spent a lot more time than a respectable man should hanging around seedy bars looking for _talent_. Girls with star quality. Girls who just needed an opening where their talents could shine.

He liked Sally. She took her dancing seriously, didn't just rely on shaking her assets like some girls did. She had muscles. A good dancer is an athlete by necessity. And she had _spunk_ , she grinned and meant it, and he liked to have a drink with her sometimes and listen to her laugh. She laughed at everything.

One day he wandered into her apartment and found her lying langurously on the couch, a copy of the _New York Post_ in her hands. "Oh, Larry," she sighed, and waved it at him. "Did you read this? _Nite Owl Apprehends Three Mobsters._ Some of King Mob's top-level henchmen." She giggled. "Henchmen. What a silly word. It's all so comic-book. But isn't it wonderful, what he's doing?" Her eyes were soft and dreamy, the eyes of a girl who'd never considered herself too old for comic books.

The idea sprang into Larry's head full-grown at that moment.

\--

The Minutemen were the best idea he'd heard of in ages, and Larry did everything he could to get them in the papers. It was all for Sally's sake, really. Not that he wasn't fond of the lads. Nelson was charming in a guileless way that really did seem to come from a comic book. Silhouette cracked the dirtiest jokes with the straightest face, and even if he knew her flirting was a subtle form of mockery, Larry enjoyed her wit. Even bitter Mothman, who hated him for being a commercial shill - okay, he was difficult, but he was a good fighter, and he tended to quote poetry, and Larry couldn't hate either of those things.

The eyes of the world are on them. They get in the papers. Little kids send them pictures, tokens of affection, and Larry proudly posts them on the bulletin board in the hall.

They get more adult tokens of affection, too, and those he treats differently depending on the intended recipient. Bill or Mothman or Hooded Justice, they're quietly tossed in the trash. Nelson, handed over with a sarcastic comment, and Nelson will usually blush and laugh and say he'll have to show it to HJ. Silhoutte, handed over without comment, and she usually smiles and thanks him with an edge of delicious amusement. Sally, well. She'd asked once when she caught him throwing some out, and it had been a matter of some argument for him not to agree to hand over Bill's and Mothman's with hers.

People write letters. People write letters to the papers. People write angy editorials, and delighted editorials, and the names of the Minutemen are on everyone's lips. And Sally's daytime career is booming, and she's happy, and so Larry is happy too.

\--

He marries Sally shortly before everything falls apart. There are photographers at the wedding, news photographers, and it makes him a bit uncomfortable to be at the center of attention, but the bride is always the real center of attention at a wedding; he puts up with it. Sally is gorgoeus, of course.

Later that day, there's a riot in Queens. The wedding gets shoved to the back of the Society pages.

\--

Four people aren't nearly so impressive as seven. He should have known they were on their last legs as an organization. Fads came and went, and masked heros had gone. He was sure of that. So he left, quietly. Get out while the going's good, that had always been Larry's motto. The Minutemen had served their purpose; they'd focused the attention of the world on masked heros for years and years, and gotten Sally a lot of jobs, and besides, they'd actually been able to get a lot done, working together.

It was all a stunt. He knew that from the start, even if poor Captain Metropolis had no idea. But masked heros were a stunt, a publicity exercise. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Gives the kiddies something to look up to.

Larry misses them sometimes, but not very much. He's got work to do, and he has Sally to come home to. (She's been acting odd recently. Kind of depressed. Well, it hardly matters. Maybe he'll try to cheer her up with a new necklace. Girls love pearls.) Sally was very nearly a household name. Silk Spectre most definately was. Letting the personas be leaked, without ever admitting her secret identity aloud, was a stroke of brilliance, he thinks. Struck just the right balance between flaunting it and being properly modest.

Well, they got what they wanted from it.

\--

Years later, Larry is staring at a headline. _Ozymandias cracks major exotics smuggling ring_ , it says.

He clenches his fists. He knows a publicity hound when he sees one. He knows the eyes of the world will be on Ozymandias. He knows that there's no way he's getting in on this one; he would hardly be necessary. Ozymandias _shines_.

It's petty, but Larry finds himself hoping someone shoots a few photos of Ozymandias doing coke or getting sucked off by a hustler. Images that perfect just aren't realistic. He'll come down too, Larry thinks dejectely. It's just a matter of time.

\---


	3. Guilt By Association

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on the kinkmeme, for the promot: _A couple other prompts got me thinking about the Sillouette fiasco. Eddie was already in DC, Byron was a liberal, Bill somehow doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who would so easily turn on someone he'd worked with, HJ and Nelly were in a relationship, Sally thought the whole thing unfair even though she didn't like Ursula and Hollis was... I dunno, Hollis. What I'm getting at is, how in the seven levels of hell did Schexnayder talk this bunch into a unanimous dump-the-dyke vote?_

  
She had to go. She _had_ do. Larry didn't really like the idea; she'd always struck him as the sanest of the Minutemen, and he admired the way she laughed at anything, absolutely _anything_. But they couldn't deal with a lesbian in their midst. They'd all be reviled. Guilt-by-association. If only the stupid girl had been a little more discreet.

The problem was that nobody else was likely to see it his way. they were all too upright, full of all-American dedication to Stick Together As A Team. He decided he'd have to talk to them one by one.

\--

Sally was first. He went to her in person. "I think we're going to have to remove Silhouette from the team," he began, apologetically. "After - after her recent behaviour, well, it would just be too detrimental - "

She grabbed his wrist. "Don't start," she hissed. "You know best. It's not like I won't be happy to see the back of her. Little bitch," she added reflectively.

Well. That was easier than he had expected. He wondered what had gone on between them to make Sally so angry, so eager to get rid of her.

\--

"I would be a hypocrite to turn on her," Nelson was saying, his voice getting into its strident heroic tone, crackling over the phone line. "You know that, Larry. You've never said a word against - against the two of us. What's so bad about Silhouette? We can _weather_ this if we just stick together as a _team_ , Larry, I thought that was the point of the Minutemen."

Larry refrained from shouting 'Bingo!', although the urge was strong. Just as he'd expected from Nelly. "Yes," he said coldly. "I've never said a word against you and Hooded Justice, _Nelson_ ".

The long, shocked silence suggests his meaning is getting through.

Larry continues relentlessly: "If word got out, Captain Metropolis would be done as a masked hero - and so would Hooded Justice - and Nelson Gardner's career would be over too, wouldn't it? You'd have nowhere to turn. You're not rich, like Silhouette is. How long would you last? But you've always understood the importance of keeping things _discreet_. I appreciate that." Nelson is a good guy, really, and he doesn't deserve to be threatened like this. But he's also too principled for anything else to get through.

"I see," Nelson finally says. "Of course, Mr. Schexnayder. You're talking to everyone individually, I imagine? I'll let HJ know - know how things stand." His voice is cold and his breath keeps hitching. He hasn't called Larry by his last name since three days after they met, when Larry had first clapped him on the back and assured him that just 'Larry' was just fine.

Well, so much for that.

\--

Bill was easier. He'd been shocked, _shocked_ , at the revelations. "I - I don't know," he kept saying plaintively. "She seemed so nice. Worked so hard to help us."

"It suprised everyone, Bill," Larry lies. "So you understand, it's dangerous to keep her in the group. It could compromise all our safety. We're going to put it to a vote at the next meeting. I hope we can count on you to be there?"

"Yes, yes, of course." Bill waved his hands distractedly. Larry had never actualy been in his apartment before, but he wasn't suprised to find it was clean as a whistle, with photographs of famous football players up on the walls and a quilt that his mother had probably sewn. Red, white, and blue, of course. Bill was so all-American it was almost cliche. "It's just so sad. I can't believe we had one of _them_ with us. And she looked so _normal_. I thought she was dating _Mothman_. And he's such a nice guy, too, even if he has those funny ideas about Communism. Really. This is absurd!"

_Absurd_ would be one word for it. Larry pats Bill on the back and smiles sincerely. "Absurd, yes. But it'll all be over tomorrow."

Bill swallows, and nods. "Right. Schucks. I'll be there."

\--

He was leaving off Hollis for last, because he wasn't sure about Hollis. Big bouncy Boy-Scout that he was, he should be as easy to convince as Bill - Larry was sure neither of them had worked out that Captain Metropolis and Hooded Justice had something going on, even with they looks they kept giving each other at meetings. But at the same time, Hollis had convictions of his own, not just ones he'd borrowed from his nice little hometown church and a steady diet of propoganda comics.

Hollis was calm. Hollis was reasonable. Hollis was nomcommittal. "I'll think about it, Mr. Schexnayder," was all he'd say. "I'll be there at the meeting. But I'm not sure whether the loss of good public opinion or the loss of Sihouette would hurt us more. She's done a lot of good work, and people have short memories. No, Mr. Schexnayder, I'd rather just take some time to think." And he hung up.

It didn't really matter by then. Four to two. Unless Nelson had a change of heart. Larry rubbed his temples and wished for an asprin and hoped that Hollis would see reason by the morning.

\--

He didn't know Mothman's real identity - Silhouette did, he thought, but how the hell was he going to get it out of her right now without tipping his hand? So he caught ahold of him before the meeting. Mothman always arrived early, and it was easy enough to draw him aside, ask to talk to him in his office. Larry broached the topic as gently as possible. He didn't expect much.

Mothman exploded.

"No, I will _not_ collaborate with this _travesty!_ We have two gay men already, you havn't had a problem with that. We put up with two racists and two capitalist shills because they mean well and they work hard. Lesbianism isn't even a moral failing. No. _Fuck off._ " Larry was so startled to hear swearing from Byron that he just stood there, mouth open. "I'm not going to put up with this. You were just going to _spring_ it on the poor woman, weren't you. Admit it. Admit it!"

Larry stammered something about reducing friction that way.

"Oh, you're going to get some friction, all right. We are _not_ sitting still for this." Mothman stalked past him, nearly bowling him over with the vast wings. Larry stared. He wasn't prepared for this. He had no plan to deal with it. And now he'd lost the element of suprise.

But it didn't matter. The vote went forward, and Silhouette just sat there glaring daggers at the rest of them.

\--

Silk Spectre, Captain Metropolis, Hooded Justice, and Dollar Bill voted to remove her. Nite Owl voted 'pass'. Mothman voted fervently to keep her, thumping the table and ranting about the meaning of heroism. When it became clear that he was overruled, he sighed heavily and said, "Fine. I resign."

There was an explosion of noise, comment, protest, but somehow it was all overruled by Silhouette clearing her throat. She examined her nails while everyone else held still with bated breath, but then she looked over at him and smiled, sad and resigned. "Thank you," she said. "The thought is appreciated. But I'd rather you stayed. They need _one_ member who's not a coward, or they'll never get anything done."

He swallowed. "Ur - Silhouette - I don't want to have to see these people! They betrayed you!" His voice was plaintive, rising to a childish crack.

"You'll do fine." She stood up, shoving her chair back so hard it rocked into the wall. "Goodbye everyone. Just remember what hypocrites you are when you're wishing you had me around to save you."

Her boots clicked as she walked out, and nobody said a word.

\---


	4. econo- diagram

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another captcha prompt.

The Veidt boy had rather worried Mrs. Thomason, to be honest. He never took notes. He sometimes appeared to be taking notes, but when she looked at the paper it was full of sketches of animals, or crabbed writing that had to be some sort of secret code - tiny, simplified pictures, some of them in odd little ovals - or geometric patterns like her Persian rug. When she called on him he would sometimes give the answer without seeming to think. Sometimes, though, he would ask her to repeat the question, and bite his lip, and tap his fingers, and say something just wrong enough to - well, to sound like he'd messed it up honestly. She got the impression he was giving a performance.

He was a C student, and out sick a remarkable amount. It was a pity; she was sure he could make something of himself with a little _application_.

She saw him sitting in the library sometimes at lunch, calmly paging through some book that was far too long for his age, something no C student should be attempting - _The Wealth of Nations_ or _On Liberty_ or _Das Kapital_ \- where he'd gotten that she had no idea, the library certainly wouldn't keep Marxist books, and she wondered if she should mention it to his parents. They were such nice, upstanding people, even if they were foreigners. But Mrs. Thomason decided against it. Plenty of boys flirted with Marx, and almost all of them outgrew it.

One weekend she came in to work on belated essay grading, and her chalkboard was covered in lines.

Adrian looked up from the corner, where he was carefully inscribing something, and nodded. "Hello."

It looked like one of his arcane Persian-rug doodles. It was three in the afternoon on Sunday, and an eleven-year-old had broken _into_ school to _use the chalkboard_? He didn't look a bit sorry, either, or scared. There were words in there somewhere, but she couldn't make out his handwriting. In fact it looked like his little picture-code.

"I'm almost done," he offered. "I'll clean it before I leave."

Why was she not suprised, somehow, that the Veidt boy knew how to pick locks? Mrs. Thomason took her glasses off and stared at the board. It wasn't any clearer that way. There was some kind of pattern, something right on the edge of conciousness, but it kept skittering away. She couldn't take it all in. "Why - What's this for?"

The Veidt boy looked mildly apologetic, the same expression he used for not answering question in class. "I didn't have any paper big enough at home," he said. "And I really had to write it down. I need to work on memory." As if anyone could hold that mostrous tangle in their head, she thought. He blushed, and dropped the chalk. It broke neatly into three pieces on the floor, and he exclaimed and bent over to pick them up.

When Mrs. Thomason took the chalk from his hand she could see his brown shirt-cuffs were dusted white. He must have been drawing and redrawing for hours. "Does it represent something?"

"Yes," said Veidt. "But I'm afraid I got the whole thing wrong, and anyhow it will have changed in a year or two. It's not important. It was an exercise." And he picked up the eraser and began sweeping it in long curves across the board.

It wasn't until he had gone that Mrs. Thomason realized he'd left an issue of the _Wall Street Journal_ on her desk. She rolled it up and stuffed it in the trashbin.

At the next parent-teacher conference Veidt's father was beaming. His boy, he explained, might not have a head for schoolwork, but he has a head for _business_. He'd asked the lad's opinion on some stock trades, and not only had lad given his advice, but Mr. Veidt had done just as he said and had made _two thousand dollars_ in a _week_. His accent was fascinating, and Mrs. Thomason found herself watching Mr. Veidt's throat as he said something to his son in rapidfire German, then ruffled the lad's hair.

"Ja, Vater," said the the Veidt boy. He was smiling, but there was something frozen in the back of his eyes.

\---


	5. Madison anubis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Captcha prompt. I'm pretty fond of this one.

Veidt always looks so _polished_ , thinks Kathy. Like he just stepped out of a department store window. It's almost eerie, to her eyes. Nobody real is that neat. She wants to ask him what he uses on his hair. Shellac? But that would be unprofessional, so she fixes her lipsticked smile on and asks, "Mr. Veidt, with the first photographs of your Antartic research facility circulating, a lot of people have remarked on the Egyptian-themed design. Was that deliberate?"

"Oh yes." He nods. His smile is absolutely perfect. "I'm afraid that was my idea, in fact. Our energy research is a monumental undertaking, so why not have a monumental theme? And we don't face the same technical challenges that, say, Amundesen-Scott Station does, so we were free to build something beautiful as well as functional." He nods out the window, towards the towering obelisks of Manhattan. It's a misty morning, but not enough to keep them from sparking in the light. "The urge to make something beautiful even out of something with a very practical purpose is, I think, one of humanity's nobelest. Look at New York. Can you imagine what a dreary place it would be if the architects had only wanted to make buildings that _worked?_ "

Beneath his hand his great, impossible cat tilts her head, and he absently scratches her ears.

"All too easily." Kathy casts a glance at the floor, and Veidt smiles like an indulgent parent. They've covered the important things, the technical aspects, the planning; the rest of the interview is for tidbits. Scraps. Yes. "I suppose an Egyptian theme is only to be expected from you," she improvises. "You chose an Egypitan pharoh's name in your adventuring days, you named your cat for an Egyptian goddess ..."

"And she certainly knows it," Veidt murmurs; it's the same indulgent proud-parent tone, and his cat begins to purr. "And wants to be treated accordingly."

"Well, most cats do," Kathy says, and tries to give a sympathetic Leauge-of-Cat-Ownees look. He returns it. "Even the decor of your main offices. That statue on your desk - there's one like it outside the research facility, isn't there? One of their gods?"

"Anubis. The jackal." He reaches over and touches the base. He's wearing a pale purple shirt and a black jacket, and they fit him perfectly, and Kathy realizes abruptly that his cufflinks are in the shape of the Eyes of Horus. A protective charm, wasn't it? She wishes she knew more about Egyptian myth than Summer, the Wiccan who ran the mourge file, had been able to impart over donuts and coffee that morning. Adrian continues, "There is, just outside the gates. You know, if people remember Anubis at all they remember him as the god of funerary rites, but he was a guardian, too. Guardian of tombs, guide of lost souls. The Greeks associated him with Hermes, the father of invention. They were both psychopomps, see."

Kathy nods as if she knew what a psyschopomp was, but compared to the words he tossed out earlier when talking about intrinsic field research, not even in deatil, just the layman's summary, it should be easy. Adrian returns both hands to paying proper attention to his gorgeous cat, who lifts her head like she's posing for the camera. He's still smiling, of course, but now he's smiling for Bubastis alone. "A god of the dark borders. The other statue is Thoth - Hermes's other counterpart. The god of balance, who moved the planets in their orbits. The Egyptians said Thoth was the true author of all science and philosophy. Appropriate to a research facility probing the darkest secrets of the universe, don't you think?"

Adrian's perfect hands go still. She thinks, from the way his fingernails look, he might be wearing nail polish, and the notion picks at her conciousness more than it should.

"Very appropriate," she manages. "Would you consider yourself a religious man, Mr. Veidt?"

He blinks slowly; his eyelashes are thicker and more gorgeous than she could ever get hers with mascara. "Spiritual, perhaps," he says smoothly. "I'm afraid that organized religion, although well-meaning, has a tendency to let rules take the place of human compassion. But not particularly, no. It seems rather stupid to speculate about a superhuman being when you talk to one on a daily basis." So, she doesn't butt in, you think Dr. Manhattan counts as a god, then? "As far as something greater than humanity goes, well, I'd rather think that humans can be as insightful, as loving, as capable of grace, as anything in the universe. When they try."

His expression is as perfect and even and unreadable as a statue, and the jackal-headed statue on his desk seems to glare balefully at them. Bubastis deigns to rub her head against his knee, and Veidt breaks the mold enough to ruffle her fur, but not enough to change his expression.

\---


	6. matchbox for

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Captcha prompt.

He doesn't know why he starts carrying a box of matches. He doesn't smoke, Nite Owl doesn't smoke, and Silk Spectre didn't smoke on patrol. He rarely ran into her, anyway, and not at all since she moved to DC. And the Comedian carried his own lighter.

But somehow the box ended up in his pocket, so he lets it stay.

Sometimes he pulls one out while he's sitting on the rooftops, thinking, or waiting for dawn to arrive. He lights it and lets it burn down until it almost singes his gloves. Watching the flames is soothing. The glow and the warmth remind him why he does all this. Home fires. Happy places. People in need of protection. He doesn't put them out until the last possible moment, and then brushes the ash off his gloves and moves on.

It occurs to him that this might be a symptom of psychological instability. Pyromania. He should be careful. He is careful, though, and the urge doesn't come often.

They vanish, one by one. He wonders if he should buy another box. This one has lasted three years. It's amazing they didn't soak through. He doesn't. He picks up a book of matches from a diner instead, not expecting it to last a week.

It doesn't. Later that same day he tosses the matchbook, only one missing, on Blair Roche's pyre. He never carries matches after that.

\---


	7. not jotting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Captcha prompt.

  
Dan looks over at his partner. He's got that little notebook out again, is working away with the stub of a pencil. It's hard to tell with the mask, but the patterns are shifting quickly. Maybe he's thinking hard, maybe his expression's shifting.

It's hard to tell.

"Hey," Dan says, "what're you - " And as Rorschach looks up at the sound of his voice, the tip of his pencil breaks off. He growls low in his throat and shakes it, as if that would make it turn on.

Dan can't help but smile. "Let me," he says, and snatches away the pencil before Rorschach can register a protest. His thorwing crescent isn't really meant for this, but it's the nearest blade to hand. "What the hell are you jotting down all the time in that thing? You don't keep a diary, do you?"

He starts whittling. The graphite is showing and he's left a neat little pile of wood chips on Archie's console before Rorschach replies, "Not jotting. Full record. Could be needed later."

"What for?"

"You never know," Rorschach says, and it's one of those quiet little sentences that climb back the back of Dan's neck and remind him that his partner is - something more shadowed than him. Whoever he really is, whatever his motives are, he's dangerous. Cunning, deadly serious, dangerous.

Dan hands back the pencil. "Well, just as long as you're not sending it to the newspapers," he says.

It's meant as a joke. Fifteen years later he'll wonder at Rorschach's insistence on checking his maildrop before they leave, but think nothing of it. By the time he works it out it will be too late.

\---


	8. three unions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Captcha prompt.

Sally Jupiter only ever slept with three of the Minutemen, although she giggled at the stories about her and Hooded Justice and giggled harder at the stories about her and Silhouette. No. Just three.

The first time she cheated on her husband, it was with Eddie. She was sorry later that she'd slept with Eddie, but it wasn't for her husband's sake. Her husband seemed to regard sex as an obligation. He had no notion of tender touch, no notion of foreplay, and she who'd always regarded sex as _fun_ realized why so many women seemed to dread it. But she was going to do this right, dammit, and so she just put up with it and was the good housewife and, well, took care of herself even more than she had when she was a teenager, until Eddie showed up at the door one afternoon.

Her heart just broke at the way he looked at her. Like he'd finally figured something out that he'd been trying to think of for ten years. Sally was so glad for it that she didn't have to think at all. She let him in, and he was gentle, and tender, and everything that didn't come naturally to him. Worth it, she thought distantly as he nuzzled at her hip, the stubble rough on her skin. Worth it. He wouldn't even climb on top of her; he rolled over and let her take over, and the lingering shreds of guilt she felt for taking another man to her husband's bed vanished when he smiled at her, so shy and sweet and _happy_.

They carried on like that for three months. Sally found herself enjoying answering her husband's rote 'How was your day, dear?' with a sweet, honest, 'Wonderful, thank you,' and watching him nod without noticing a thing.

When she realized she was pregnant, she knew it had to be Eddie's. She'd been careless with him, and she was practically religious about condoms with her husband. Well, that was just fine with her. The look on Eddie's face when she told him was the happiest she'd ever seen him.

Two days later she covered up the black eye with makeup and her husband never said a thing.

She didn't touch another man until the divorce. After it finalized, though, she seduced Hollis Mason. He was sweet on her, had been for a long while, and she knew it. It didn't take much. A few drinks, a coy suggestion. An explanation that Laurie was at a friend's house. They had all night.

Maybe he deserved better than to be her rebound, but he was so boyishly thrilled. He wasn't as gentle as Eddie, had no qualms about pushing her down, biting at her breasts, grabbing her hips and not letting go. It felt good. This was how sex was _supposed_ to be, just a little bit wild, and very alive, and if they made a lot of noise, well, his neigbors were too far away to wake.

"This was probably a really bad idea," he mumbled afterwards, his face pressed against her breast. He didn't have stubble.

She giggled. "But it was fun, wasn't it?"

"Yeah." He sounded a little sad. But they napped a bit and did it again, and then again while they were waiting for the pizza guy to show up, leaving them grabbing for their clothes like guilty teenageers when the doorbell rang. In the morning they showered together and used up all the hot water. He had the sweetest smile she'd ever seen.

Sally showed up two weeks afterwards when she had the night to herself again, and Hollis welcomed her in and made dinner. When she tried to kiss him he pushed her away. "I can't. I thought about it and - it's a terrible idea. Really. I'm sorry, Sally." She had half expected it. He let her spend the night anyway. She tried to take the couch, but he insisted.

There were a number of men after that, flings, casual friendships grown heated, but she was too busy with Laurie to seek out anything long-term. That was alright. She wasn't that kind of girl, she'd decided. Trying to get involved just broke her heart. Flings were more her style. She got pregnant once, and almost told the guy, but he was married, she didn't want to get involved. She fretted a lot and didn't tell Laurie and when she miscarried at three months, she was shamefully grateful.

Two guys wanted to marry her. Both she eventually threw over as hard as possible. She was done with it.

Nelson, she thought was cute, always had, but she'd written him off. He was gay, after all. She didn't mind that as long as it was discreet. But it was a pity, that adorable blush and those healthy, strong muscles. So when he showed up at her house at one in the morning, while Laurie was out on patrol, it was a shock.

She fixed Nelson a gin-and-tonic. It took five minutes to pry out of him what the matter was. He was upset about the meeting. Wondering whether all this was worth it, what they'd accomplished, what the point of life was. In general. He felt purposeless, adrift in the world. Sally had very specific concerns and she shared them with him at length. This took three more gin-and-tonics for each of them. At some point the conversation turned to violent, cruel boyfriends, and what to do about the fact that you loved them anyway.

Sally couldn't have said, afterwards, how they ended up in bed. He'd never slept with a woman before. He told her that. He'd never even _kissed_ a woman before. For all that he was suprisingly good. She led, of course, and he let her, and he blushed a lot, and she took her time. This was a one-time thing, she was sure, an artifact of gin-and-tonics and ennui and desperation.

Still worth it, though.

Nelson had to sneak out of the house before Laurie awoke. She was a sound sleeper and he was very sneaky, so this wasn't a problem. Sally snuck with him out to the car, and kissed him - on the lips - and wished him well. His hair was going grey and he had crow's-feet, but he still had the cutest smile.

Once was plenty. One was all she needed, with him. It was enough to remind her that they were both of them still living, still needed the thrill of adventure.

A week later she left for France. She'd always wanted a world tour. Laurie shook her head a lot and made her promise to call at least weekly. Sally agreed. Inwardly she resolved to find at least one man in every country, and tell Laurie about them. At length. That girl needed to get out and _live_ a little. Who knew? Maybe she'd snag some nice young lad and talk him into putting on tights.

\---


	9. trite year's

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Captcha prompt.

He turns twenty-five. Hooray. He can run for Congress now. He can't get drafted. Except that he's seen enough Congressmen to know what utter bastards they are and how shitty their lives are, and he never had to get drafted. He volunteered. He jumped right in and started cleaning up the docks, just because they were there and they were dirty and why the hell not, he was big enough to be scary and he didn't really give a damn what happened to him.

And two years after that they were talking in hushed tones about his tactical genius and sending him on missions that really should have taken a team of Ranger commandos except that Ranger commandos were kind of traceable and Eddie was, well, there would never be any proof he wasn't just acting on his own initiaive. And he got shit _done._ No messing around.

And it's been nine years, and he's sitting in his nice house in Washington DC and celebrating his birthday by getting really, really, thouroughly drunk. Next year would be just like year, just as much of a mess. The world was full of stupid people doing stupid things and hurting each other. Always had been. Always would be. And what was he going to do about it? He was going to go hurt some more of them.

They talked in cliches and hid behind their little gods and he saw things that they didn't, and it didn't matter. Never would. There wasn't any bigger truth, and all getting rid of your comfortable illusions meant was that you were never going to be comfortable again. In fact, you were going to hurt. A lot. For the rest of your life.

He goes to bed around three, clutching what he suspects is the last bottle of vodka in the house. He's gotten to that funny point where you're already hungover but still drunk, and he's going to hurt in the morning. But it's already morning and he's already hurting. Who gives a fuck?

It's all been done before.

By seven he's rubbing his temples and using what vodka he didn't spill to wash down asprin pills, and nodding and making agreeable noises over the phone. Uh-huh. No problem. He can go to Taiwan. Right away.

He's used to this sort of thing.

\---


	10. shuffle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on LiveJournal. I'll just quote the original post:
> 
> The theory: put your music on shuffle. Write a ficlet for each song, taking only the time the song runs to do so. When you have ten, post.
> 
> The practice: I can't type that fast on my PDA, and between that and the fact I was doing some of these on breaks at work and kept getting interrupted, and the fact that some ideas just would not shut up . . . well, they're short. About half, the ones I did on my laptop, were done while the song played. I should do a formal variant where instead of time, you have the wordcount of the song.
> 
> Also, there are twenty. I'd done twelve before I remembered to check. And I skipped some songs which were just impossible. I got 'We Will Become Silhouettes' and all I could think of was to go the Cage route, make six blank lines, and declare it a ficbit. I swear it'd work for 'Watchmen' and that song, but I couldn't bring myself to. And you just
> 
> okay, I was going to type 'You just try writing a fic that relates to 'Other Places Jimmy Hoffa Isn't', but I had a flash of inspiration and apparently, you can:
> 
> _**other places jimmy hoffa isn't [paul and storm]** _
> 
> _Bill, Dave, and Larry met at a Teamsters meeting, so of course every few months their Friday beer session brings up Jimmy Hoffa. "I swear," Larry is saying tonight for the fifth time, "he's not dead. He was abducted by the CIA and he's in a secret prison in Cuba. I swear. Heard it from a guy whose brother-in-law works for the FBI."_
> 
> _"Nope. Sorry," says the big man in biking leathers at the other end of the bar. He's been steadily knocking back whiskey. None of them have seen him before. "He's dead. Very dead."_
> 
> _"How do you know, huh?" Dave says, just tipsy enough to be defiant. "You kill him?"_
> 
> _The big man grins. The scar down his face turns it into a sneer. "Nah. I was supposed to, but the Mafia got there first. The guy who did it told me about it, though. They buried him under a Wal-Mart parking lot right here in Hoboken. But I like the way you think, gentlemen."_
> 
> _"You're kidding," says Bob. His throat is dry._
> 
> _"Not a bit." He fishes out a hundred-dollar-bill and plunks it in a puddle of spilled beer. "Barkeep! This should cover it, the rest is for my new friends here. And if you'll excuse me, I have a plane to catch."_
> 
> _The big man walks out without finishing his whiskey. They hear the roar of a motorcycle taking off._
> 
> _Dave hesitantly declares, "He was messing with us. That's all." Bob and Larry nod in unison, and they turn their thoughts to spending the hundred. They all put it out of their heads. But somehow, they find excuses not to shop at the local Wal-Mart ever again._
> 
> That was fun. But there's still stuff I just can't fic to. I enjoy the challenge, and it's good exercise writing short pieces, but given my worldbuilding obsession stuff _is going to_ get long.
> 
> Most of these could be movie- or comic-verse; the two are congruous. Some are movie-verse, more or less.
> 
> Anyway, onto the ficbits:
> 
>  

**smile like you mean it [the killers]**

Eddie lived life to the fullest. He grabbed on with both hands. All that cliche shit, which was really just code for 'laugh, dammit, and look like you're having fun'. What kind of comedian didn't have fun? He ate, drank, and was merry. Someday soon he was going to die.

Everyone was. That was kind of the point. He didn't know when or why, but the missiles were going to start flying. Probably a computer glitch. Somebody spots a migrating crow on the radar. Some shit like that, it'd just be appropriate.

Even when he's not working he goes for long walks through the ghetto neighborhoods. Fallout shelter signs on every big building, and graffiti on everything flat. Trash in the gutters. Children laughing and playing. It's the last that gets to him. What kind of idiot brings a kid into _this_ world? Kids are for the future. There's not going to be a future, not anymore.

He gives it twenty years, tops. If they're lucky.

He brings the newspaper up to the roof of his rowhouse and reads it, smoking a cigar, keeping an eye on the sunset sky for incoming missiles. There's an article tucked in the local news that says Silk Spectre and Dr. Manhattan have moved in together, in a neighborhood not far away. Eddie thinks about getting their address, dropping by. No. She won't want to see him.

Eddie bets, though, that however he stacks up against the warheads, there's one thing Manhattan would protect. Teleport her to India. Put up a force-field. Something. It should be a reassuring thought. But really, it'd just be the best joke of all. Eddie, of all people, having his little girl turn out safe, while all the fine upstanding citizens' precious jewels get cooked. He should love the idea.

It makes him sick to his stomach. It makes him want to cry. But he makes himself grin anyway, and he stubs out his cigar and goes back in to watch the news. Maybe tonight's the night.

 

 

**photograph [verve pipe]**

Sally loses track of how many times she's been photographed. She's on tabloid covers, news spreads, girlie magazines. She clips out the best ones and pins them to her walls. So do thousands of teenage boys. Sally doesn't mind; it's flattering. They think well of her. They think she's beautiful. Who doesn't want to be beautiful?

There are picture of her in her costume, in every kind of clothing, in lingerie. There are pictures of her alone, with her friends, in a lineup of models. Mostly alone. Young and beautiful and enticing. She's always smiling in photos.

As she gets older her face develops frown-lines. She never bothers to dye her hair.

 

 

**get on your boots [u2]**

"You like it?" Sandra says, and Sam's mouth goes dry. Okay. Tight is fine. She kept the tight. And the boots have flat, chunky soles, very practical. Except they also have buckles. Big silver buckles, halfway up her calves, and he can't keep his eyes off her legs.

"Sam? You don't like it?"

"Uh, no, it's great," he says hastily. "Really great."

Sandra grins and pulls her goggles down, and suddenly she's something else entirely, something dark and predatory and mesmerizing, a creature of darkness. Forget the peace talks, forget higher noble purposes, forget the whole damned mess. This is what it's all about. Boots on the ground. "Good," says Sandra happily. "Let's go kick some ass."

 

 

**space oddity [dave bowie]**

1960\. Jon is visiting Mars for the first time. He would still be getting used to the idea of teleportation, but he knows he will be accustomed to it, so he already is.

Jon and Laurie, in 1985, are walking across the surface of Mars for the last and only time. Laurie is too caught up in the swirl of emotion to notice her amazement. Years later, she will remember how beautiful it was, and be grateful she got to see it.

It is 1962, and Jon is bringing back samples of Martian rock for NASA to analyze. "There is no life there," he tells them, "and there never was." The science team looks disappointed.

Laurie is reading a newspaper in 1993. The Unified Mars Mission's rover, Druzhba, has sent back photographs of what looks like a huge pile of broken glass. NASA is at a loss. She thinks of calling Cape Canaveral and explaining.

Jon, in a time past counting, is examining the remains of a spacecraft in the deep void between galaxies. Its name is written on the prow in letters of gold: SPECTRE. He smiles.

In 1938, a clockmaker is helping his son adjust a telescope to point to Mars. "See?" he says. "The planets move in their orbits by rules. It all fits together."

His son nods, and remembers.

 

 

**bleeders [wallflowers]**

The smell of dried blood is becoming familiar to him. Rorschach is not sure if that's a good sign. He doesn't want to get hurt, of course, but it's good that it no longer puts him off when he does.

It's a pity that masked heroes are required. If they are required, let them be good ones.

He washes out his suit in cold water in the sink, which is stained with years of bad water. He's getting better all the time. More observant. Stronger. It all feels horribly inadequate just the same. He fails every night, doesn't dodge fast enough, misses something he should see. Every cut is a rebuke. But he's getting used to that, too, and the fear and the pain are sliding away as he slips his mask on each night.

Any night could be his last. He slips on the trenchcoat and tells himself he's not afraid of that, either. After a while, it's true.

 

 

**darkness, darkness [solas]**

She's good with shadows. She blends in to them, lurks, dances through them, emerges at the perfect moment. None of her fellow heroes, Silhouette thinks sometimes, can say as much. They're brash, loud, trying to leave a mark on the world too bright to be erased.

She lights a cigarette and watches the people flicker in and out of their clubs, laughing, trying to drive off the darkness.

She lives in shadows, thrives on them. She doesn't need to be loud or splashy, just sharp. Plenty sharp. Fortunately, this has never been a problem for her.

Her knives glisten just a little, and as she steps out into the circle of lamplight the shadow clings to her body like a lover.

 

 

**high and dry [radiohead]**

The lights get in his eyes.

Veidt can't stand television. It's an irritating and irrational prejudice, one that a man in his position really shouldn't entertain, but there it is. Too many lights, too much glib superficiality. He can't appear on camera without feeling like a pinned butterfly under glass. (He doesn't allow it to show in his face, of course.)

The world is watching. At least, the parts of the wold that follow the newscasts are. Close enough. Veidt fixes a smile on his face. This is all a necessary step in his plan, and the pangs of regret he feels to be killing off the noblest part of himself are insignificant. By this time next year the dismembered corpse of Ozymandias's legacy will appear in toyboxes all over America.

"The rumors are true," he tells the interviewer aloud, and ignores the dry feeling in his mouth and the dizziness in his head. "My name is Adrian Veidt."

What does it matter if he's losing his old mask? The new mask will be better. More convincing.

 

 

**we didn't start the fire [billy joel]**

He wondered for the first time when he met the Comedian, fifteen and gleefully brutal. But Hollis wasn't that far from fifteen himself then, and he put his misgivings aside in favor of fatherly pride.

It was inevitable, he told himself. The tide of history. People had always looked to heroes to save them. Now they were getting heroes.

When the Minutemen disbanded, there were approximately four dozen costumed heroes active on the East Coast. Most were second-stringers, active only a few months or years, who lost as often as they won. But it was enough to keep the idea alive.

Hollis handed his name over to Dan Dreiberg with a sick feeling of inevitability. The world was changing. It was time. They were a part of history now.

The damage had long since been done.

 

 

**if you believe [our lady peace]**

This is the vision laid out before then: peace. Shining cities laid out in harmony, a better world, a world with a _future._ It's a beautiful vision.

Their world, their future, all there for the taking. All there, whatever they do. They just have to close their eyes and step in.

Laurie is exhausted. She has seen more devastation than the human soul was meant to comprehend, and somewhere in the wreckage she shut down. She steps forward. She can do nothing else; new life, new hope, is on the other side of the lie. There is no hope left here.

Daniel was furious. He has run out of fury, with everything else. He clenches his fists and hates himself for it and agrees, because there's nothing else to do.

Rorschach is the strongest. He does not believe the glib vision, even when there is nothing else but darkness. He will not bend.

So he breaks.

 

 

**ants marching [dave matthews band]**

Bernie always starts the day with coffee and a pastry. What kind of pastry varies. There's this nice little bakery two blocks from his apartment; he gets whatever the lady who owns it thinks is good. She's plump and wears rhinestone glasses and if he didn't miss his wife so much he'd flirt back. Maybe someday.

A newsstand is a wonderful place for people-watching. They speed past, all on their own little missions. He wishes sometimes they had his perspective. Could see the big picture, not just their own mad little lives. He's got years and he reads the papers, so he sees it all.

Today's pastry is a jelly-filled roll with a buttery glaze. Bernie's just picking it up when the damned New Frontiersmen hobo comes looming up. He bites down instinctively and splurts jelly on his face. "Hey," he says, hastily trying to wipe it off. "Man, you scared me. Hey, you're early."

Not that he really has a schedule, not like some of the customers. There's one lady who comes by at nine, exactly nine, and gets a Gazette and tips him a dime, and walks off with the paper rolled into a club. There's a guy who wears a different color tie by day of the week, who hits between eight-fifteen and eight-twenty. The hobo's a bit more random. Bernie wonders about him. Bernie wonders about everyone whose lives he sees through the zoetrope of their paper-buying, but he's long ago resigned himself to making up the juicy bits.

"Time is short," intones the hobo. The sun outlines his red hair with a gold halo. Maybe he's really a KGB agent, keeping an eye on the competition. Yeah, that'd work.

"Well, no rush. Here." Bernie hands over the New Frontiersman and examines his pastry. The splurt of jelly looks like a blood-splatter on the cheery yellow glaze.

 

 

**the rose [bette midler]**

They had it all working. He would have sworn. It was delicate, it was difficult, but they'd built something precious and wonderful. Then came the damned HUAC. Rolf said he was going to lay low for a bit. It'd be fine. They had an argument and Rolf walked out, and a few months later, Nelson read about a John Doe pulled from the harbor and had to take a few days off to cry. Fifteen years, dammit, fifteen years and now it was all dust.

He kept going somehow. He kept crimefighting; it was his memorial. He never talked about it. In 1966 he gave up and called it quits.

A few weeks after his retirement he wakes to the feeling of a heavy body settling on the bed beside him. He's shocky with adrenaline and half-upright before there's a big, strong, familiar hand over his mouth. "Shhhh," says Rolf. "I have a lot to explain, love."

Old, slim hopes suddenly leap up. Nelson doesn't want the hand to go away. Proof it's real. "Yeah," he says, mouth dry. "Rolf ..."

"Brought you something," says the gruff voice, and produces a bouquet of roses from the floor.

Nelson smiles and takes them. More than ten years, and it's all swept away in an instant. "Welcome back."

 

 

**viva la vida [coldplay]**

Dear Hypatia Hollis,

We've never spoken and never will, which I regret. I would have liked to meet you, and explain in person. But perhaps I don't have that right.

You must know that your parents have secrets, that your mother is the hero called Black Crow. They probably haven't told you, however, that they used to be Silk Spectre and Nite Owl. I counted them as my dearest friends, once. I have no friends left. We parted ways fifteen years ago. Perhaps I should take the circumstances to my grave, and trust that they will as well - but that would be too merciful an ending. One person, at least, should know the truth. Jon is beyond caring, and in an hour or so, I will be beyond caring. Yet truth is still important.

Ask your parents, and they will tell you the truth. It's a heavy secret to lay on you, but I do not doubt for a moment your ability to carry it. You have great strength.

I care for you more than you know, and in a way, everything I've done for the last fifteen years was for your sake. I am leaving you a better world.

My worldly riches go to you, as well, but they're not important. Dispose of them as you wish. The secret is important. Sometimes the word is made better by an evil act. The act is still evil, and I deserved the hell I'm unjustly escaping now. The world is still better.

It's your world now. I did my best to keep it beautiful. Look after it for me, Hypatia.

Sincerely,

~~Ozymandias~~  
Adrian Veidt

 

 

**sour girl [stone temple pilots]**

Jon knows when he meets Laurie what's going to happen. She's sixteen. She's sharp-edged and beautiful and she looks at him as if they're the only two sane people in the room. She kisses him, she touches his cheek as if she's not afraid, and she's never afraid, just angry. Very angry. She takes after her father. He doesn't tell her about it.

In 1985, she is storming out. Still angry. Knowing he doesn't understand. He never will. He can't change human nature. He can only watch her and hope that Dan can make her happy. He doesn't know just then, doesn't know anything past the tachyon storm.

He'd go after her if he could. Beg her to stay. She's all he has.

But he can't, because he doesn't.

So he goes through the motions, already knowing what's going to happen. He plays his part. And twenty years later, when Jon comes back to Earth just long enough to visit her again, make sure she's alright, it's like the lifting of a weight he'd forgotten was there, an emotion he can't even name, to know that things worked out and Laurie is happy.

 

 

**thunder road [bruce springsteen]**

Sally shows up at his door one morning. Hollis blinks at her. She's dressed in yellow and has her hair done up and she looks miserable. "Hollis," she says. "Get me out of here?"

"Sally - "

"I know. We're not kids anymore. I've a got a daughter to look after. She's the damned Silk Spectre, she can do her own laundry for a bit. _Get me out of here._ "

So he does. He strokes her hair back from her wrinkled eyes and sits her down in his latest restoration project, a 51 Mustang, and they go approximately west. She laughs and her hair blows back in the wind, and he goes far too fast and whips them around curves until she's almost thrown into his lap. He doesn't ask what brought on the sudden need for escape, doesn't think about old dreams and the men who looked at her and the way she made herself into whoever other people wanted. He wishes she were twenty years younger. He wishes both of them were thirty years younger, then they could be young lovers with their whole lives ahead of them. Instead they get to Chicago and get a motel room and lie in the same bed without touching, and he can hear her crying in the night.

They arrive in California three days later, footsore, sunburnt, and aware of their age. They feel better anyway.

 

 

**all tomorrow's parties [velvet underground]**

She's not just going to wear her mother's old costume. That would be silly. She designs a new one, and takes advantage of the wonderful new world of vinyl and see-through fabrics to create something really eye-catching that doesn't look like it came out of a costume party from the thirties, and that doesn't restrict her movement. At the time Laurie likes the idea of being eye-catching. If nothing else, it'll be a distraction. Her mother approves whole-heartedly of it. Says it's futuristic. Stunning.

When she walks into the meeting she can feel all the eyes on her, although she has eyes only for Doctor Manhattan. He's fascinating. Utterly fascinating. But the Comedian catches her eye, too, with his map stunt, and afterwards she decides she'll go to him. He seemed to think the whole thing was just as ridiculous as she felt. Maybe they've got things in common. Maybe he'll give her some pointers. She's still weak on self-defense. Not brutal enough. And he was smiling at her.

When her mother collapses crying in the car, Laurie just feels stupid in her getup. The whole idea of being a costumed hero is starting to feel pretty silly. Even if the clothes are cool.

 

 

**windowsill [arcade fire]**

The sensible people were in bed hours ago. Steve Fine know he's not really one of the sensible people. Sensible people don't become homicide detectives. He sits at his kitchen table and sucks on his cigarette instead.

He can't get the image of the blood-splattered poster out of his head. What kind of guy does it take to do that? If you don't want your kids getting nuked, you don't do them in yourself first, you - hell. You don't move to the middle of nowhere, because if the Soviets launch everything they've got, the only safe place is going to be a concrete bunker in Antarctica. That poor guy must really have thought it was a kindness.

How sick is he, sympathizing with a murderer? Well, everyone has reasons. Maybe it's good. It's what separates him from a nutcase like Rorschach. They've formally pinned one murder on him, but there've been a lot more that smelled of him. All wanted men. Men Fine wouldn't have minded pulling out his pistol and shooting in the head, if he's being honest, although he wouldn't have. He upholds the law.

Fuck, what does any of it matter now? He goes over to the window and stares out at the dark city. There's not that much difference between him and Rorschach. Just the rules. That's all he has. He plays by the rules.

He has to help people. It's what he does. And he interviews crying widows and measures bloodstains and wonders if any of it is going to do any good, if the nukes start flying tomorrow.

Somewhere outside, someone is sobbing. Fine's hands go white-knuckled on the windowsill and he stares at the 'Nostalgia' billboard and the broken windows on the building opposite, and wishes he knew what to do.

 

 

**these things [she wants revenge]**

She walks out. Months of work setting up the fake theft ring, a lovely boudoir, and Silk Spectre calls him a damned pervert and walks out without a blow.

So Captain Carnage follows her home.

She works it out, of course. She's halfway out of her costume and he's watching through the window, and suddenly she looks right at him. He swallows, hot anticipation burning in his groin.

Silk Spectre emerges in full costume, heels clicking. She glistens in the dark. She hisses and grabs Captain Carnage by the scruff of his neck, and he can't conceal his groan. Even in the chill night air he's sweating. "Look," she says, and then she stops. "You like getting hurt? Fine. _I'll hurt you._ "

The emergency room doctors ask him if he wants to file a report, how many men attacked him. He giggles through the broken ribs. Silk Spectre's expression of terrible glee is burned into his brain. He won't go back. By the end it hurt too much even for him.

 

 

**leeds [indigo girls]**

He gets sick for the first time in a decade on the last day of an iatrogenetics conference, which juxtaposition amuses him a little, but not enough to make up for it. He holes up in his hotel room with the curtains drawn, since the light hurts his eyes, and alternates annoyed transatlantic phone calls with throwing up and trying to keep down asprin tablets. He isn't supposed to get sick; he should be too strong for it. Right now he's weak as a kitten.

Bubastis would help, if she weren't on the other side of the Atlantic. She'd curl up beside him and purr and lick his ear. And probably catch it and be miserable. No. Best not to risk contact with anyone. He's too sick to fly, anyway.

The news sounds like it's underwater, and it's all depressing.

Never mind. People are stupid and petty and the world encourages the worst of them. Things will change. Someday.

When Adrian finally sleeps he dreams of the great world-serpent of the Norsemen, and of swimming through fathomless depths, frozen to the bone, looking for a far-off light that never comes any closer.

 

 

**bizarre love triangle [new order]**

Jon keeps coming up. It makes it worse when Laurie keeps apologizing. Dan isn't enough of a jerk to blame her for it. They'd been together for a long time.

No. He's a jerk, he tells himself very firmly, for being glad. Laurie loved Jon. Loves Jon. He brought her home, he should be looking after her as a friend, not trying to seduce her when she's at her most vulnerable.

So it's a relief when she seduces him, instead.

She's decided, she wants this, hallelujah, she wants him, and Laurie has always gotten what she wants. He wonders how she and Jon managed to get involved in the first place. Probably it was all her idea. She's that kind of woman. He loves her for it, always has. He wonders what she sees in him after, well, after Jon. Other than the ability to be wrong.

 

 

**streets of philadelphia [bruce springsteen]**

Rolf Mueller vanished in the 50s. Nelson Gardner died in a car crash in '74.

Shortly afterwards two men called Wolfgang and Justin bought a rowhouse in Philadelphia. Wolfgang was, he said, retired - he never said from what - and Justin did something mysterious and managerial for Veidt International. They lived very quietly. Sometimes they went out to dinner, or drove up to New York for a concert.

Once they were gone for three days, and when they came back Justin was weeping softly. Old Mrs. Wellesley from next door asked where they'd been, what the matter was. "Maine," said Wolfgang shortly. "Visiting a friend." He bundled Justin inside without further comment.

Most of their arguments were too low to be heard, or masked by the television.

"I just don't know," Justin was saying, at ten past midnight. The Keene Act had been the biggest thing in the headlines, and the argument had begun during the late news and only now risen to audibility. "Can't tell who I am anymore. I used to think it mattered. That I was a good man doing good works. And now it all looks like so much -"

Wolfgang said something, too low to be heard. There was a soft thump.

Justin sounded shaken. "I guess so. But it still feels like we messed up. If we'd done better, kept strong -"

"Hush. It's over." Wolfgang's voice, raised and stern. "You will not feel guilty. I won't allow it."

"I don't. I just wish I could forget. Really forget."

When the low noises turned to moans Mrs. Wellesley took her glass away from the wall and went to get a drink, shaken for no reason she could name.

They were friendly to their neighbors, and Justin had a genial kind of charm. But they never made friends. It was just the two of them, and the neighbors, if they wondered, decided that they must have clung together for protection back when two men weren't supposed to love each other, and never broken the habit. Mostly, nobody wondered. Whatever they had between them seemed to satisfy them, and if they seemed melancholy, it was no more than anyone might in this sad, uncertain world.

\---


	11. how stands the city on this winter's night?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on the kinkmeme. Prompt: _"Apologies. Did not sleep well. Cold weather coming in." "Huh, and what? Your heater broken?" "..." "I... Rorschach? Wh-where did you sleep last night?" "...bench" Need more fic that focuses on Walter's crappy living status. Preferably with Dan motherhenning and demanding that he stays at his house until he's back on his feet._

He's cold, they're both cold, and the snow is sticking to their shoulders as they stare down at the unconscious woman who is, as it turns out, not their target at all.

"Sorry." Dan almost thinks Rorschach sounds embarrassed, except Rorschach never sounds embarrassed. "Should have noticed the difference in color much earlier. Not at my best."

It's annoying, and it means they have only collared one of the Leopardess's henchwomen instead of the Leopardess herself, but they've recovered from worse disasters. Dan claps him on the shoulder reassuringly. "We'll finish up tomorrow," he says. "No big deal." Rorschach makes a completely uninterpretable noise, and looks aside.

It's not until they're back in Archie that he notices the way Rorschach's arms are clutched around himself, and how he just sits in the copilot's seat, slumped dully against it, instead of staring out the window with tense alertness as usual. "Hey, buddy," he says, and the way Rorschach's head jerks up confirms his guess. "You feeling okay? You look tired."

"Am tired," Rorschach mumbles. "Too cold to sleep yesterday."

It's snowing out, but how cold does it have to get indoors to bother someone with a heater on and warm blankets? "Heater on the fritz? Man, that gets annoying. I've got some electric space heaters, you know. Got them a couple years ago when my furnace when bad. You want them? to borrow?" It's as casual as he can make it, but there's real concern layered underneath. From the odds and ends and casual comments of six year's partnership, he's gathered that Rorschach lives in a tenement somewhere, that his landlord is prickly about rent and casual about fixing the plumbing, that he can hear the noises his neighbors make through the walls and that this bothers him on a deep and visceral level. Dan has never had to live so close to people, and he imagines it would render him utterly unable to function. But there's nothing he can do, without knowing Rorschach's real name or his day job or anything, really, except that he has a firm sense of justice, a brilliant mind, and likes far too much sugar in his coffee.

"Would do very little good, Nite Owl," says Rorschach as he retrieves a peppermint from his pocket, "in the absence of electric sockets." He doesn't sound amused, but Rorschach is always deadpan.

"No electric sockets? Good lord, I didn't think there were any apartments _left_ without electricity. You should move."

Rorschach shakes his head a little, more a nervous gesture than communicative, as he pulls up his mask just long enough to pop the peppermint into his mouth. "Am in the middle of doing so," he says. He sounds slightly ashamed. "Apartment had electricity. Not even in New York would people try to rent a room that didn't."

It takes a moment for Dan to parse this, and then he winces. "Where exactly were you trying to sleep?"

"Central Park. Traditional place." Rorschach rubs at where his eyes would be. "Had no warning before eviction. Will look for new quarters after the first of the month. No cause for concern."

So. He got evicted, he's sleeping on a park bench, and he plans to _keep_ sleeping on a park bench for the next week, presumably because he doesn't have the money for a deposit on a new place. Or not sleeping, as the case may be, with the cold. Dan grits his teeth. Stubborn bastard. "Right. You're staying with me until then."

" ... what?"

"You heard me." Dan pats him on the shoulder. "I've got a spare room. Or if that's too luxurious," and Rorschach sniffs, very quietly, at the edge of sarcasm, "I can set up a cot in the Nest or something. Can't protect the city very well if you're a human popsicle." It's supposed to be more cheerful than nervous.

Rorschach slumps even further down in the chair. "Thank you. Daniel." And it's a measure of his exhaustion that he doesn't even attempt to argue.  
  
\--

Dan gives him a cot in the Nest, two space heaters, four blankets, and leaves a box of cornflakes next to the bed. Rorschach's apparent willingness to eat anything out of a box or tin, heated or not, is taking on a sinister new aspect. Is it possible that this isn't the first time? Rorschach seemed to take the eviction utterly in stride. One tenement is much like another; all his landlords could have been sticky about rent and bad about fixing the pipes, and surely he's always had to listen to his neighbors. It's no way for a man to live.

The next day, he leaves a hotplate, a saucepan, and five cans of soup.

\--

"Hey," Dan says casually at the end of the next night. "I'm making a grocery run tomorrow. Anything you want?"

Rorschach seems quite startled by the offer, inasmuch as can be determined from his body language. He's got his edge back, has caught up on his sleep, has probably been eating better than he has for a while with Dan insisting on cooking for him. Almost disturbingly domestic. And Dan has been gentle, has refrained from touching him unnecessarily, has made a point of knocking and getting permission before entering the Nest, so that Rorschach can take his mask off in safety.

No. Not safety. Privacy. It wouldn't be unsafe for Dan to see his real face. But that's not the point. The point is that he's stubborn and paranoid, and he would sleep in his uniform and mask without a qualm if he thought there was the slightest chance of being observed while asleep. Dan should be flattered that he is _trusting_ Dan's respect for him, is not shoving a chair under the doorknob or tying it to the pipes to keep the door very, very shut.

He's probably not used to groceries. Tenements are bad places to cook, and eating at cheap diners for every meal is no strange thing to New York's poorer inhabitants.

But he says, eventually, "Strawberries."

Dan blinks, under the goggles. Now that was completely out of left field. "Sure. I'll try," he says. "Not sure they're in season. I didn't know you liked strawberries."

"They're sweet," Rorschach says, as if that were reason enough. He sounds almost wistful.

Dan knows when to drop it. "Strawberries, right. How about I get you some pasta too? You can do it on a hotplate pretty easy, and it's filling. Nice and warm."

"Don't like foreign food," Rorschach rumbles. Not that he's ever complained about eating Dan's leftover takeout Chinese. There's a moment of silence. "But will try it. If you think I should."

\--

He works during the day. He won't say where, only that he has to be there by seven-thirty and leaves at four in the afternoon. He leaves well before sunrise.

Five days in, Friday, and Dan decides he's being stupid hanging about in his kitchen wondering if he'll have time to do the checkup Archie's overdue for after Rorschach comes back, and goes down to the Nest. It feels oddly like entering someone's empty house - already, after just five days - but Daniel tells himself he has as much to be there as he has to be in his own garage. Not that he has a garage, or has ever owned a car. But the principle of the thing.

It's cold downstairs, of course, and he turns the space heaters on.

He resolutely does not go over to the cot until he's run his diagnostics, measured the oil level and checked the lines for a leak he began to suspect earlier that week - real, but slight - and made some notes about upgrading the screechers. And then, telling himself it's not snooping, he goes over. To change the sheets. That's all. Yes.

Rorschach's mask is sitting on the pillow, and the rest of his clothes are folded neatly atop the blanket, and his shoes are sitting next to the cot. Dan had half suspected that he was changing halfway to work, but this makes more sense. Yes. It's not as if the street entrance to the Nest is somewhere he could be seen coming out of it, and once he's out, he's just another random guy, and New York has millions of men wandering across it on a daily basis. What's one more? It's not as if the snow is pristine enough to leave tracks in. Not in New York, not for more than five minutes at a time.

The mask shifts under his hands, and he jerks back in surprise.

Of course. Responds to heat, Rorschach told him once. The heat of his fingers, for example. Not like he's never touched his partner's mask before, and watched it respond, but only when there was a face beneath it. Small touches. Adjusting his collar, brushing off some clinging bit of dirt, reminding him in the gentlest way possible, when he's gone all silent and cold and breathing hard after a bad job, that he's not alone, it's okay, it'll be fine. (Rorschach would never accept the words, but he endures the touch without comment.)

The pockets are more of an intrusion. Flashlight, of course. Grappling gun. Those he knew. Bag of peppermint candies, almost empty. Rorschach usually carries some kind of candy, or just sugar cubes, and it amused Dan at first, then made him wonder. A small leatherbound book, which he doesn't open. He's got some propriety left. ( _Then why are you going through his pockets_ , interjects a treacherous voice, and he shoves the thought away without examination.) A map of the subway system. He's seen that pulled out to consult a few times. Lockpicks. Switchblade. What's a hand-to-hand expert doing with a switchblade? Battered felt-tip pen.

Nothing personal.

He puts it all back, and folds up the clothes, and doesn't change the sheets.

There's never been anything personal about it. They're partners. They work together. There are people in there somewhere, but Rorschach doesn't care to touch on that.

\--

"Will be gone tomorrow," Rorschach tells him over breakfast. Omelets in Dan's kitchen, black coffee for Dan, who doesn't like to be up this early, and coffee with far too much sugar for Rorschach. "Payday."

"You know," begins Dan, and pokes his omelet with his fork. He thinks he cooked it too long. "You know, you can stay here as long as you want. I don't mind. You could take the guest room. Has to be more comfortable than sleeping downstairs. Loads warmer. You wouldn't need all those blankets. And quieter."

There's an uncomfortable silence. Rorschach stretches it out by taking a long gulp of his sugary coffee.

"Have to go, Daniel," he mutters. "Will not impose further on your hospitality."

"It's not an imposition, dammit. If I minded, I wouldn't have offered. Come on. Maybe you can find somewhere with good plumbing, but you'll still be able to hear people through the walls. Doesn't that drive you nuts?"

Maybe he's imagining it, maybe he isn't, but Dan suspects there's something almost like a smile brushing across Rorschach's lips. But his voice is as flat as ever. "No. It's my city." He says it as a straightforward fact, unworthy of elaboration.

He's said before how much the things he hears disturb him. Was he lying? Has he changed his mind? No, of course not, Rorschach never changes his mind. Maybe he takes pride in it. Maybe there's something to be said for being that close to people. To feeling the vibrations of their footsteps, hearing the echoes of their arguments and conversations and love songs. People may never meet their neighbor's eyes, but they're _close_.

No strange thing, then, that it should be disturbing and comforting all at once, to someone so practiced in a double life, someone who looks at the whole city and thinks it's his to care for. Someone who gets right in close to the darkest part of people.

Dan is not like that. Dan needs his isolation. There's a blanket of snow on his house, and it deadens all sound, and he is grateful for it. He hates to hear the neighborhood around him.

He reaches across the table and pats Rorschach's hand. Rorschach stiffens for a moment, then relaxes; it's only Dan, after all. "Hey," Dan says. "You need anything, you can ask me. You know that, right? Space heaters, kitchen stuff, whatever."

"I know."

\--

He isn't surprised, though, that Rorschach doesn't take anything when he leaves.

\---


End file.
